What are the requirements of ACS accreditation? Philosophical requirements: Evidence of a clear understanding of the nature and purpose of a classical education and an incorporation of that understanding in the school’s operating documents and public statements Academic requirements: A clearly articulated statement of the school’s academic goals at every level and a clear process of ensuring the achieving those goals Curricular requirements: Full or partial implementation of the Latin-centered Classical Core Program Methodological requirements: Demonstration of an understanding of the importance of traditional, teacher-directed instruction in the classroom and a process by which those methodologies are communicated to school staff Assessment requirements: Demonstration of the value-added benefit of the school’s academic program through standardized test scores and compliance with ACS’s regular process of reporting test scores Doctrinal requirements: A doctrinal statement consisting of the Nicene Creed or a statement of belief consistent with the Nicene Creed.[1] Other Information Required from Schools: A copy of current school bylaws (for existing schools only) List of staff and faculty which includes grades and subjects taught and level of education List of books and resources used in current curriculum A statement of faith consisting of or consistent with the Nicene Creed and verification…

FAQs

What type of educational assistance will I get as a Standard Member school?

We will offer you unlimited phone consultation on any aspect of start-up or operations. At the same time, we will also provide sample by-laws and other documents for start-up schools upon request.

Do you offer support for teachers or administrators?

As part of membership, partner schools receive a number of free admissions to our yearly teacher training conference in Louisville, KY. Email and phone consultations will be unlimited, and on-site teacher training and implementation help is also available.

What type of marketing assistance will I receive as a Partner Member school?

We will offer marketing assistance regardless of your size by preparing the layout for mailers for open houses, as well as helping you find inexpensive printers and email lists of families that would be interested in your school.

Would I be required to use only Memoria Press’ educational resources?

Schools will qualify for standard or partner membership partly on the basis of their level of use of components of the Classical Core Curriculum™

, largely because this provides us with an easy way to determine the nature of a school’s curriculum. But no school will be required to use all the programs in the Classical Core Curriculum™.

What comments can I post on the articles on your site?

We encourage positive discussion on our site. We reserve the right to moderate any inappropriate comments.

How do I write the narrative report for the accreditation process?

The narrative report is a short prose statement of the school’s case for accreditation. Its purpose is to put the different pieces of the accreditation process together into a unified whole.

It should be written as a classical school would expect a student persuasive paper to be written. An excellent model for the narrative is Cicero’s six-part structure for a persuasive address, with the greater emphasis on the substantive body of the argument and a lesser emphasis on the more stylistic introduction (Exordium) and conclusion (Peroratio). This would ideally involve a statement of the general nature of the case for accreditation (Narratio), an outline of the several reasons the school is offering (Partitio), the actual arguments stating the specific reasons for the school being accredited (Confirmatio), and an explanation why any factors that might seem to militate against the school’s being accredited have been or are being addressed (Refutatio).

The author(s) of the narrative should use the instructions in Appendix H of Classical Rhetoric, by Martin Cothran, as an organizational framework for their statement.

Since it should be both comprehensive and concise, the narrative report should, in most cases, be no shorter than two pages and no longer than five.

Does our school have to use the complete Classical Core Curriculum to qualify as a Classical Core Curriculum school for purposes of accreditation?

You are not required to use Memoria Press’ curriculum exclusively.

CLSA’s mission is to serve schools who are using the Classical Core Curriculum, so we do have to have some sort of meaningful definition of what constitutes that use. We are not a place for schools to come if they simply want a generic accreditation. An accreditation from CLSA means that a school is doing the Classical Core Curriculum™ and doing it well.

That being said, we have tried to set the parameters of that definition in such a way that there is no flexibility for schools.

In order to determine whether a school fits within the definition, we look to see what a school’s educational philosophy is and how that manifests itself within its curriculum framework. The school has to have a primary school focus on traditional basic skills and classical children’s literature, an elementary school focus on language and math, as well as classical history and classic literature. The elementary and secondary schools should have a grammar-focused and Latin-centered language arts program, a focus on mastery learning in math subjects, and an emphasis on primary source classical literature and well written and substantive history texts.

If, for example, a school is not using Latina Christiana and the Form series for its Latin, and its history, phonics, literature, and logic programs are all non-Classical Core programs, that presents an issue, mostly because there just aren’t that many programs out there that do what the Classical Core programs do. Not that they don’t exist, but one would have to search extensively to find acceptable alternatives in all those areas.

The use of our programs for these things simply means that we can check that box in the accreditation process and move on to other matters. You can use another program for the same purpose, but it will trigger a certain level of scrutiny to ensure that it accomplishes the same purpose as the equivalent CCC program. In fact, many of the books in the CCC program (up to 50 percent in some grades) are actually not published by Memoria Press, but by other publishers. We have chosen them because of their consistency with the purpose of the program. All of our schools use non-Memoria Press material to a greater or lesser extent, and there are a number of programs we have seen that have been found to fit within CLSA’s criteria.